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Lord Malloch-Brown, a minister in Gordon Brown’s Labour Government, is being sued by billionaire Beny Steinmetz, it emerged today.

Steinmetz alleges that Lord Malloch-Brown and FTI Consulting, the City PR firm he chairs, passed on confidential information about his mining company BSG Resources (BSGR) while acting as its adviser until last November.

The Labour peer is accused of colluding with billionaire investor George Soros after he joined FTI in September 2010.

Court papers allege: “The claimants believe that at a time when Lord Malloch-Brown’s firm [FTI] was engaged as a key adviser on reputational and other matters, he was behaving in a collusive and unlawful manner with Mr Soros and providing confidential information to Mr Soros. This culminated in Lord Malloch-Brown, under pressure from Mr Soros, procuring FTI’s resignation from its account with BSGR in November 2012.”

BSGR specialises in natural resources such as iron ore, bauxite and uranium. The company has been an active investor in Guinea since 2006 but has encountered difficulties in the African state since the election of Alpha Condé as president in 2010.

Condé set about reforming the country’s mining industry shortly after he was elected, enlisting the help of Soros as an adviser.

According to Steinmetz and his advisers, Condé has taken “positions on resource nationalism and contract reviews which have unfortunately stopped all large mining development projects in the country” — including BSGR’s.

Dag Cramer, chief executive of Onyx Financial Advisors UK, which is advising the claimants, said: “Whilst purporting to be acting in our best interests, Lord Malloch-Brown was in fact serving to cause us enormous damage by facilitating George Soros and his NGOs which, we believe, facilitated a campaign of smears and innuendoes.

“These actions were unlawful. They severely damaged our position with the Government of Guinea, which is being advised by George Soros and his NGOs and which has been attempting to renege on its contractual obligations in respect of BSGR’s interests in Guinea.”

Lord Malloch-Brown is a former deputy secretary-general of the United Nations.

FTI said: "We intend to defend
this claim vigorously.”

The PR firm is representing Lord Malloch-Brown in the case. George Soros could not be reached for comment.